People are cutting the cord on cable TV and finding better value in online streaming services. A very similar situation is being seen in the cloud collaboration space. Companies are dropping their legacy audio and web conferencing providers and finding more value in a solution that covers video, audio, web and chat and easily scales to their business needs.

Interoperability

Collaboration tools should support all of the ways your teams communicate and connect. A solution with standards-based interoperability allows you to extend your investment and get even more value from the solution by integrating with other communication tools inside and outside of your company and across vendors, partners and customers. For example, Lifesize interoperates with the Microsoft suite of business solutions like Microsoft Teams, Exchange, Outlook™ and Skype for Business to provide a clearer audio and video experience in the meeting room while seamlessly integrating into the Microsoft workflow you use every day.

Travel and Out-of-Office Time Savings

Traveling for work isn’t really a luxury anymore, and nothing about it seems to be getting much faster or more productive, either. From the out-of-office time saved on travel to the daily time saved through more productive, shorter video meetings, time savings is a key factor driving organizations to consider and adopt video conferencing technology. Why send an email when you can virtually chat face to face, and why drive to the other side of town to ask a question when you can just do a quick video conference call? And yes, of course, teleportation will bring with it a new era of travel productivity and time efficiency, but while that’s being worked on, video conferencing is a fine substitute.

Effortless Scalability

The days of purchasing “technology boxes” for video conferencing abilities are over. The enormous financial step previously required to move from low-quality free video or web conferencing services to HD or even 4K business video calls has dramatically reduced. Cloud video conferencing software means you can now start small with your video conferencing strategy and build up as you need it, easily and more cost-effectively than ever before.

“Lifesize allows our teams to communicate from anywhere and any device, without costly infrastructure investments, IT hassle, or connectivity issues. Having the Lifesize interface available in 15 languages will help us expand our collaboration beyond our English-speaking team members. We’ll be able to bring more people, in more sites and more departments, into the discussion, which will move our business forward faster.”

When researching the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a collaboration suite, many companies are unaware of just how much is being spent on all of the different collaboration tools across an organization. In fact, in a recent study, we learned that 56 percent of IT professionals don’t know what they’re spending on collaboration solutions [5]. Shadow IT makes things even worse by adding hidden costs usually unmonitored by the IT department. How much could an all-in-one collaboration solution save you?